IP: more on The Next Generation Biotechnology May Make Superhero Fantasy a Reality

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Benjamin Kuipers <kuipers () cs utexas edu>
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 18:24:48 -0500
To: farber () cis upenn edu


This is scary stuff, and legitimately so.  But these are still the
utopian scenarios, where the scary question is whether we really want
to go there.  Very much worth thinking about.  But ...

Post-September 11, the scarier problem is a small group unleashing a
bio-engineered plague that wipes out the human race, either deliberately
or accidentally, believing incorrectly that they can protect themselves.

Because of self-replication, biological terror (and far-future nanotech)
are a fundamentally bigger threat than nuclear weapons.  A bad mistake
in one place can spread to cover the globe.

In 1968, Stewart Brand wrote "We are as gods and might as well get
good at it."  The problem is, we don't have the immortality of gods
(even if we conquer old age, we won't be invulnerable), and we don't
have Heaven to live in.  We could very easily create Hell.

It's no longer that we "might as well get good at it."
We *must* get good at it.

Ben


At 6:38 AM -0400 4/27/02, Dave Farber wrote:
> The Next Generation
> Biotechnology May Make Superhero Fantasy a Reality
>
> By Joel Garreau
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Friday, April 26, 2002; Page C01
>
>  <snip>
>
> There doesn't seem to be much standing in the way of this transcendence of
> human nature occurring in your lifetime -- 20 to 50 years from now. That's
> the one thing on which everyone who looks at this compounding curve of
> change agrees. "The remaining human future is 25 years or 50 years," says
> Max More, president of the Extropy Institute, a pioneering explorer of the
> acceleration of technology and trans-humanism.
>
> <snip>
>
> In the first, the secrets of human consciousness and the human brain elude
> us, and change is stately. In the second, incremental change continues to
> accelerate, aging is reversed, the revolution has occurred, and we are just
> trying to deal with the consequences. In the third, new intelligent species
> roam the Earth in 20 or 30 years, some of them mainly flesh and blood and
> some of them mainly not.
<snip>


Benjamin Kuipers, Professor         email:  kuipers () cs utexas edu
Computer Sciences Department        tel:    1-512-471-9561
University of Texas at Austin       fax:    1-512-471-8885
Austin, Texas 78712 USA             http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kuipers


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